Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

So many of you have probably already heard about this, but the new flagship model from Nokia, the much hyped N97, is only going to come with a single 434MHz ARM 11CPU. Now to me this seems like a huge downgrade, although there has been a lot of development on the Symbian platform and it is unknown whether it will be seen as underpowered or not.

We can compare this to the N95 and its dual 332MHz ARM11s and dedicated 3D chip. The phone is fast, although it does lag at times. This is because most programs are not written for multi-CPU machines, so one core remains idle. I think its quite possible that the slight increase in performance of a single CPU will be able to counteract the loss of a second CPU, however there is also the loss of the 3D chip to consider, the increased screen resolution (3x increse to be exact), and the introduction of that touch screen display and more complex visualizations. Will the imprevements in code efficiency be able to counteract all of that? I don’t know. But I do hope so.

One thing I do have to say in favour of the N97 is that the reduction of the number of components will increase battery life, and this is my one big gripe about the N95 8GB.

I have been comparing the two phones for a while and found some questions that I honestly can’t answer myself:

• what resolution is the TV out on the N97?
• where is the GPS antenna positioned? (for all those familiar with the N95 8GB, you have to keep the phone open in order to get the best reception)

Hopefully it will be available soon, some people will dissect it, review it, and I’ll be able to get my hands on a good deal

For now we can only wait and hope for the best

Posted by Wordmobi

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while now, and with some previous events this seems like the right time to do so.

I’ve never really considered cell phone cameras as being able to replace regular cameras in everyday lives, that is until I got my N95 8GB. Previously it was my strong belief that cell phone cameras are good for emergencies, for picture caller ID, or for that time that you absolutely have to take that picture but don’t have an actual camera.

When I got my N95 and started taking pictures my stance quickly changed, aided by the fact that at about the same time I became camera-less. I started taking photos and was pleased with them for a while. Then I compared my cell phone shots with my previous camera shots and fonud that some aspects of the image could use a lot of work. There are really two major problems: noise and poor low light visibility. Ironically both could be solved quite easily by just using a larger sensor and some clever optics.

Now some would argue that putting in a larger sensor would increase the size of the cell phone, but I don’t think it would. Look at cameras like the Sony T90 or Canon SD780 – both are tiny and could be smaller the screen size was to be decreased, and both take great shots.
But what about driving up the cost? Granted, the phones would be a little more expensive to manufacture, but they would sell for more as well, and would be much more difficult to copy, which is becoming a major problem.

So lets take a look at the extra components required and their costs:

1. New camera sensor. Wouldn’t have to be the same quality as in actual cameras, simply some 4x larger assuming the megapixels would remain the same (and there is absolutely 0 reasons to have more than 8MP)
2. Better optics. Again, nothing like in actual cameras, just a decent glass lens with a cover.
3. Dedicated, specialized processor. This would be best in a partnership with a dedicated camera manufacturer, like Motorola and Kodak.
4. A decent flash. Best would be a pair of LEDs along with a nice Zenon flash. I don’t think I need to explain this one.

And what would be the cost of this? Manufacturing wouldn’t increase by more than 10%, but I would expect it to be less than 5% increase. The biggest costs would come from forging partnerships, developing and designing. But the pay offs in quality would be huge.

So what would this do for us? Create more functional cell phones, and reduce the number of gadgets we carry around with us on a regular basis. My phone is already an email and IM portal for me, it is currently my only camera but I would like to have a much better quality camera if I could.

For the skeptics out there that don’t think its doable, take a look at the Samsung INNOV8 and Motorola ZN5.

Posted by Wordmobi

Ever since I got my nice data plan I’ve been under this mindset of not needing my phone to have Wi-Fi because, well, wherever I go I’ll have 3G coverage before I’ll be able to find a hot spot. And its worked out great at work, on public transit, even in my car with the occasional Google Map or even Google Search query saving my butt.

This weekend, however, I was taking a trip down to the states and wanted to check my email while waiting for a store to open. Not wanting to get charged for data roaming I decided to scan the area for wi-fi hot spots and was able to find two weak ones that I couldn’t connect to. Then I decided to move my phone to a different position (I was in my car and had the phone beside the transmission stick). Now I was able to find 3x more hot spots, most of which happened to be free. After connecting to a default “linksys” hot spot I was able to check my email, my social networking profiles, and all free of charge.

So what is the moral of the story? I guess its that you can’t trade in an older technology for something newer just because it seems more convenient at the time, and especially if the technology allowes you to save money. Having Wi-Fi this time probably saved me at least $10, which isn’t much, but its a free technology and I should probably utilize it as much as I can. Having said that, I should start looking into Skype and try using that when I’m calling long distance or just am out of my calling area seeing as how my provider doesn’t have long distance charges for data transfer as long as I’m within the country.

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from my Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

I was listening to the radio on my phone and it occured to me to check just how much bandwidth I’ve used since I last reset the phone. Which would have been over the last two months or so.

So I openned the Log application and navigated to the Packet Data section, to find that I’ve used 8GB of data!! Now that’s pretty amazing! And its mostly through listening to Internet Radio @ 128-192 kbps, and of course some “Torrenting”. But the really amazing part is that tethering only takes up a couple dozen megabytes.
Just so you guys can get an idea of how much data listening to internet radio uses up, just over today I’ve accumulated 350MB just by listening to internet radio.

Now I have a pretty decent plan. I got my plan during a promotional 6GB for $30 period, except I managed to get $15 off of the plan through various connections. So I decided to take a look at how much my provider is currently offering data plans for, and it turns out the most you can get for $15 is 2MB of data, with the biggest plan being 5GB for $80. I guess I’m getting a pretty darn good deal, since my whole plan doesn’t even come to $80 after taxes!

I also decided to look through my bills and so far I’ve used a little over 12GB of data, almost all of which would have been used during the last 4-5 months (the monthly record is about 3.3GB).

So what’s the point of this post? I guess I just really don’t want to do work

But it would be pretty interesting to find out what the heavy users out there are spending all their bandwidth one?

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from my Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

Ok, this is the last update on the keyboard, I promise.

I was using it for sending SMS and found a couple strange issues. Namely some people were complaining that they were receiving blank messages or that the message was some garbage with a strange triangle in the middle. I didn’t really understand why it was happening and later noticed that as I was typing, every now and again the counter would drop by about 100 characters. This didn’t seem to make any sense as it seemed to occur completely randomly. Also, keep in mind this only happened when I was using my keyboard, and has never happened before.

So as I was typing up yet another message, carefull watching the counter so as not to send another screwed up message, I found the culprit: Shift + Space.

Don’t ask me why, I really have no idea, but I would really like to ask Nokia as to how that got past testing and just what is causing this. So, if you know why, please do let me know and I will make sure to give you the appropriate credits.

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

So I had to make an SSH connection to some Lunux computers for one of my assignments at school. I usually use Putty on my computer but I decided to try and use my phone and see how that goes.

Well while I can’t tell you which version of Putty I was using (no about action in the menu), I can tell you that it was quite usable. Of course it would have been completely useless without the keyboard.

One of the issues that I’ve found, the screen on my N95 was too low resolution to really do anything. Although I think if I were to use it on the N97 or 5800 it would be quite usable for something even a little more than just a quick fix. Of course the creators tried to correct that by allowing you to make the font smaller, and while this helps, no questions asked, it doesn’t beat a nice big, high-res screen.

The second issue would be the input method. If you don’t have a keyboard then don’t even think about using this for anything except, well, anything. With the keyboard that I was using (Nokia SU-8W) I was fairly proficient and didn’t have too many problems, but a full size keyboard is unbeatable if you’re using it for long periods of time.

So can you spend hours using it? Probably not.
Is it useful for network admins (or the like) that sometimes need quick access to their network to check up on some info? Totally.

To be honest, I don’t really use Putty that much, or SSH connections for that matter, but the bottom line is that using Putty on my computer and using it on this device only really differs in the screen resolution and the smaller keyboard. But if you can get a device with a higher resolution and then get used to the keyboard you’re set. In the small amount of time that I used it I stopped seeing those things as a problem.

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from my Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

So I decided to write a little update on things that I didn’t necessarily know during the first review of the Nokia SU-8W keyboard.

Missing row:
This seemed to be a minor issue considering the size of the rest of the keys and of the keyboard itself. And it is. However I’ve found that when I need to write something with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols, my typing speed is turtle slow compared to what it would be given that extra row of keys.

Battery:
After using the keyboard for countless hours, I’m still on the original bettery that came in the packaging. Needless to say batteries will last you a while. Of course by the same argument we could consider why Nokia didn’t include a small Li-Poly battery, which would be able to power the device for the same amount of time in a smaller form-factor, thus reducing the size of the keyboard, but seeing as how its been ages since they first introduced the keyboard its safe to say that a number of issues have changed

Final thought:
Nokia, great job on the keyboard but its Old! Make something New already!

-Nokia FanBoy

Posted by Wordmobi

Finally the site is running full speed, so welcome!

I will be away from posting for a short while during my exams and a heavy load at work, but I should be back and running 100% in a couple weeks.

In the mean time read through what I’ve got so far, comments/suggestions are more than welcome!